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Talk:Eleanor Bull
Listing her appearance as Direct is something of a judgment call. The only appearance by a character who could be her is one sentence on page 235 which reads "The proprietress showed Sheriff Norris, Lope, and his soldiers into a room with a bed, a long table, and a bench next to the table." If you want to really split hairs, it could be that she isn't even alive in the story, as she died 2 years prior in OTL. The place is called "Eleanor Bull's ordinary" but that could be a name memorialising the deceased original owner. But since HT explicitly identifies Don Diego Flores de Valdes and Robert Greene as being alive a few years after their OTL natural deaths, I'm comfortable assuming the same for Eleanor Bull.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 21:55, December 29, 2015 (UTC) :John Shakespeare died early, though. Quite a bit earlier. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:53, December 29, 2015 (UTC) ::HT says so for JS. (And it makes very little sense on the story's own terms.) He doesn't say EB died early, so Occam's razor says she didn't.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 21:55, December 29, 2015 (UTC) :::I don't disagree. I just felt it was appropriate to point out a counterexample. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:59, December 29, 2015 (UTC) ::I still disagree with the idea that John is dead. Whenever William thinks of John, he reflects that John was one of those men who "wanted to see their sons as less than themselves, not greater." (Pg. 203) Then he remembers John speaking of Catholic ceremony when William was younger. The closest it gets is a reference to his past as a glovemaker: "William didn't so much as make gloves, as his father had." (Pg. 443, emphasis added.) Now that does suggest at the minimum that John wasn't making gloves anymore, and even does suggest that John was dead. The problem is that in somewhere in the 1570s, well before the POD, John does in fact seem to have given up glove making and fallen on dire financial times. I use "seem" because the internet sources I'm looking at admit that there are documents that make it clear that John wasn't paying taxes, was withdrawn from public life, was selling off the properties he'd purchased in his salad days, etc. Presumably, if he were still a glove maker, he'd have been in better financial straits. So really, out of the scant three references Amazon yields to John Shakespeare, only one really suggests that John is dead. ::And even if he is indeed dead, there is nothing that says when that happened that I can find. Obviously, Amazon is not fool-proof. Since Jonathan is evidently reading as we speak(?) maybe he's found something more specific. ::Anyway, that's a long way around the barn for me to say that I think Jonathan's point is a fair one. Lope also says that "Eleanor Bull's malmsey" was excellent, suggesting that Bull does in fact still run things. Eleanor Bull living a couple of years longer seems as plausible and arbitrary as Robert Greene living longer, anyway (or John Shakespeare dying before 1597). ::(And for the record, I'd typed up this lengthy response before the follow up conversation took place.)TR (talk) 22:32, December 29, 2015 (UTC) :::That's fascinating about John Shakespeare. I just took this wiki's statement that he died for granted. On the other hand, this wiki for years incorrectly listed Tsar Nicholas II's fate in Southern Victory, and was uncertain about Hirohito's role in the same (not to mention "Censor" Adams, Charles Maurras, and George Herbert Walker), so things can fall through the cracks. I myself don't have the energy to search for all John references in RB (which was quite a pleasurable read, although it occasionally suffers from HT's belaboring obvious points, and the Shakespearean dialect is often overdone) but maybe there's a devout RB expert out there who can confirm whether John is alive or dead. Nothing while I was reading jumped out at me regarding John, so it may be that his "death" is a mistake here, not by HT. "Not making gloves any more" definitely doesn't automatically translate to "is dead." ::::Here's how I first concluded that John Shakespeare died early: ::::As we know, HT is quite firm that, yes, John was a recusant, both in RB and in WHGTY. Specifically, in RB he has Will reflect on John's nostalgia for being able to practice his faith openly, both during Mary's reign and early in Henry's. There's no problem with the Marian portion of that, but Parliament disestablished the Catholic Church three years after John was born, so he'd be unlikely to remember much about those days. There are several ways to spackle over that: it's hardly unheard of for people to be nostalgic for something they're too young to remember in any meaningful way; perhaps John's parents described the old Mass is such vivid, loving detail that young John "remembered" it, and when he experienced it as an adult while Mary was on the throne, his "memories" were validated. Also, this nostalgia was apparently directly tied into the liturgy, and Henry vetoed most liturgical reforms that would have altered the form of the Mass significantly until near the end of his life. Perhaps John's hazy childhood memories are largely made up of Anglican services that seem very nearly Roman compared with what came in under Edward and Elizabeth. ::::However, I don't see how we can definitively rule out that HT got John's DOB wrong. And if he did that, is it so hard to imagine he got the DOD wrong as well? ::::Anyway. Will remembers John talking about the Mass under Henry and under Mary--''not'' under Isabella. That's what led me to assume he'd somehow died before the Duke of Parma landed. I suppose an alternate explanation is that Will is so estranged from his father that they haven't spoken in at least ten years. (John wanting Will to be less than he'd been himself could feed into that; I had no memory of that line.) It's also possible that John doesn't care for the Catholic liturgy anymore, or that it's not as he remembers it, or that he'd rather be a persecuted Catholic in a free country than a free Catholic in an occupied country. I would think that, if any of those were true, Will would have hung a qualifier on his inner monologue; and if he were so estranged from the still-living John, he either wouldn't think of John's nostalgia at all, or would resent its object. ::::A bit of corroborating, though also circumstantial, evidence is the anachronistic production of Hamlet. The play has a different title (or rather, is known by a different portion of its full title than the portion we usually use) but is otherwise identical in every respect that we saw--including much of the dialogue between Hamlet and his father's ghost at the end of Act I. This production is staged in 1597, and afterward Marlowe comments on the play's having debuted the previous year. We also know from another scene that bootleg scripts were already circulating. ::::The actual date of Hamlet's completion is unknown, but the earliest date I've ever seen suggested for it is 1599, usually later. The earliest known manuscript was published in 1603. John died in 1601. I recall my Shakespeare professor in college stating quite authoritatively that he believed that Will was inspired to write the play in part by the experience of mourning John's death. If so, then an earlier DOD for John helps explain an earlier completion of the play. ::::These things leave me in little doubt that, intentionally or otherwise, HT was invoking a man dead before his time in RB. However, I will admit that it's not definitive. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:13, December 30, 2015 (UTC) :::::That seems hardly definitive to me. ::::::Well, yes, I believe that's exactly what I just said. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:42, December 30, 2015 (UTC) :::::I've always heard that Hamlet was inspired by Hamnet's death, not John's. ::::::I finished that class much too long ago to try to recreate Dr Regan's argument from memory (Richard Regan--no wonder he went into bardolatry) but Hamlet is about dead fathers, not dead sons. Also, Hamnet died too early for that. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:42, December 30, 2015 (UTC) :::::I think the above in-story list is too ambiguous to conclude that John is dead. The usual rule here seems to be that if HT doesn't say someone is dead, then they aren't. The argument for John being dead comes across as too speculative, just as for FDR in Southern Victory. I think it is reasonable to change John's status to Contemporary.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 04:27, December 30, 2015 (UTC) ::::::We can remove the Inconsistency comments, but the comments are all in the past tense, and there's enough ambiguity to make a commitment in the other direction problematic. Better to sidestep the question altogether, I think. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:42, December 30, 2015 (UTC) :::::::Some entries here have "Contemporary(?) references" as the qualifier; e.g., the Nazis referenced in passing in the later part of "Ready for the Fatherland," and Will Rogers in The Victorious Opposition. A good idea might be to change John's story box to "Contemporary(?) references" and add a lit comm like "It is not clearly stated whether John Shakespeare is still alive during the novel, although he was alive in the same years in OTL." Would that satisfy?JonathanMarkoff (talk) 06:07, December 30, 2015 (UTC) :::A clever lawyer would say that "Eleanor Bull's malmsey" could refer to the house and not the current owner, but Occam's razor tells me that HT intended for Bull to be the appearing proprietress. Whether she was the bartender is open to interpretation of sketchy OTL information.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 22:54, December 29, 2015 (UTC) The OTL information as to whether she was the bartender as well as the owner is pretty contradictory, as it all based on conflicting eyewitness accounts of Marlowe's OTL death, which is probably the only reason history knows of her. Again, judgment call.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 21:42, December 29, 2015 (UTC) :I'd leave her as a "Businessperson" then. For larger establishment like this, it wouldn't be unusual for the owner to serve the occasional drink, especially a bottle with glasses while not being a regular bartender. I was thinking of some of the small diners from Southern Victory where the owner was also the cook with one or two waiters and had been double cat'ed accordingly. ML4E (talk) 23:16, December 29, 2015 (UTC)